The Future of Social Networks and the Web

FutureWeb2010 Conference, Raleigh, N.C., April 29, 10:30 a.m. – noon

Chair: Fred Stutzman, social networks researcher and consultant. Stutzman is the founder of ClaimID.com, a social web identity management system. He is currently a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science and is working on a dissertation that examines how people use social network sites for support during a life transition. Stutzman also held technical and management roles for Ibiblio.org, The Motley Fool and Nortel Networks. His work has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Wired and Newsweek Magazines, and on NPR.

Panel description: According to a recent study, 47 percent of adults use social network sites. Few technologies have grown as fast and had such an immediate impact on culture, communication and commerce. In this panel, we’ll look at the future and consider the next 53 percent, or what happens when social networking becomes ubiquitous. What are the challenges faced by individuals and organizations as social networking expands? What business opportunities are opened up by this global-scale personal interconnection? And how can we leverage this technological shift to increase civic participation, improve health and better society? The panel will aim to specifically isolate the key challenges and opportunities in the looming future for social networks and it will work to identify some specific action steps that can be taken today to work for a better tomorrow.

Panelists:

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  Chris DiBona

  Chris DiBona, open source and public programs manager for Google. DiBona and his team oversee projects like the Summer of Code, which works to oversee license compliance and supports the open source developer community. He also works with Google Moderator, the polling locations API. DiBona has an international reputation for promoting open source software and related methodologies. His personal blog can be found at http://dibona.com/.

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  Henry Copeland

  Henry Copeland, the founder/CEO of BlogAds, which connects 2,500 influential blog advertisers with blog readers and the social media elite. He is also the founder of Twiangulate, a social discovery service for Twitter. Copeland serves on the advisory board for SXSW and the advisory board for George Washington University’s Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet.

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  Zeynep Tufekci

  Zeynep Tufekci, an assistant professor and social networks researcher who works at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. Her research focuses on the social impacts of technology, theorizing the web, gender, research methods, inequality and new media. Tufecki’s blog, which focuses on issues surrounding technology and society, can be found at http://www.technosociology.org.

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  Wayne Sutton

  Wayne Sutton, social networks consultant and strategist at Fragment. He also works as a development and marketing strategist at TriOut, a social network designed to help users meet new people in the North Carolina area and discover new things to do in the Triangle community. Sutton is a partner at OurHashtag. His Web site can be found at http://Wayne-Sutton.com/.

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  Dave Recordon

  Dave Recordon, Senior Open Programs Manager at Facebook. Recordon leads open source and open standards initiatives. He has previously worked with Six Apart, a blogging company, and has played a key role in the development and popularization of key social media technologies such as OpenID. Recordon is the youngest recipient of the Open Source Award (2007), recognized by Google and O’Reilly. Visit his blog at http://daveman692.livejournal.com/.

For more information about FutureWeb 2010 panel discussions, featured panelists and more, click here to navigate to the FutureWeb site. To register for the conference, visit the FutureWeb registration page.